KSTF Young Scholars Research Fellows

The No Child Left Behind mandate of a highly-qualified teacher in every classroom presents a significant challenge in the field of science teacher education. There is considerable proof that the United State's students are not achieving at competitive levels in science, and there is growing concern about the public's understanding of science and scientific inquiry. The task facing those educating tomorrow's teachers is: How do we prepare science teachers who not only understand the content and practices of their scientific discipline, but also know how to teach it effectively?

Teachers' knowledge for teaching a specific discipline - their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) - is arguably the most important type of knowledge for subject-matter teaching. In the area of science education, PCK links scientific knowledge with the right-for-the-moment teaching strategies that advance learning. A knowledgeable teacher not only knows the subject matter, but also knows how to give the right feedback, what demonstration or analogies to use, and how to engage students in scientific investigations while providing appropriate support. Research has demonstrated that such knowledge can be developed through teacher education and that preparation methods specifically developed for science teaching result in educating teachers who are better able to impact their students' learning.

While this knowledge is a critical ingredient for effective teaching, we know very little about how it develops over time during teacher preparation or how the various elements of such a preparation program contribute to the development of PCK. To develop better preparation programs we need to understand how PCK develops and what contributes to its development. We need to characterize the learning progression for PCK. Learning progressions map out a trajectory of learning over extended periods of time and provide guidelines for supporting students as they advance in their understanding. Thus far, learning progressions have only been used to describe children's learning trajectories for particular science concepts across grade bands. These learning progressions are a powerful idea that can be used in the field of teacher education, and such progressions can help build theory about teacher learning, as well as generate guidelines for the design of more effective preparation programs.

This project seeks to develop and study a learning progression, across a two-year teacher preparation program, that describes the deepening of the PCK of pre-service secondary science teachers. This is an ambitious endeavor. I will focus the research project on the PCK that deals with using evidence for building scientific models of phenomena and developing argumentation skills. These practices are considered central to the development of scientific literacy across disciplines, and are emphasized in current standards documents. Towards this end, I will develop a learning progression for scientific modeling and argumentation that is grounded in research on teacher learning and encompasses the five methods courses (and associated clinical experiences) in the two year Ed.M teacher preparation program at Rutgers University.

Rutgers University's Graduate School of Education educates some of the finest science education teachers in the State of New Jersey, and we have a cohort of faculty focused in the area of science education. I serve as the academic coordinator of the biological sciences education program and teach four of the five methods courses. I will test the progression by implementing it with the 2008 cohort of pre-service teachers (estimated 15-18 students) and analyzing the development of PCK over the course of the program and in relation to the activities and experiences in which our students engage (such as the development of unit plans, lesson plans, formative assessments, etc). This work will result in fine-grained descriptions of the learning trajectories of individual teachers and reveal patterns in the development of PCK over time. This research will provide important insights about the influence of various activities and experiences in teacher preparation on the development of teacher knowledge and practice.